2015 Healthcare Information Technology Salary Report

Executive Summary

Health IT continues to be one of the fastest growing fields in the US for all of the reasons you might suspect – first HITECH, then the ACA and Meaningful Use, now ICD 10. There’s no question that health IT workers are in high demand, but are health IT salaries high enough to attract and keep the best talent? Exactly how much do health IT professionals earn? And what is the average healthcare information technology salary?

These are the questions the 2015 HealthITJobs.com Healthcare IT Salary Survey set out to answer. According to the results, the average health IT salary is $87,443 (Median $80,000) and the average bonus is $7,990 (Median $5,000). These numbers can swing significantly in either direction, depending on the specifics of the job in question. So which healthcare IT jobs pay the most? And what do the top earners have in common? Keep reading for the details.

2015 Healthcare IT Salary Infographic

Expanded Infographic Available to HealthITJobs.com Members

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About the Survey

More than 700 health IT workers took the survey, offering up not only their salary information, but other details like how much experience they have, their employer type, job titles, and even things that seem like they shouldn’t impact health IT salaries, such as age and gender.

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Health IT Professionals at a Glance

Health IT spans a wide variety of skillsets and functions including EMR analyst, project managers, software developers and informatics.
So exactly who made up our pool of respondents? More than two-thirds are currently working in health IT jobs, and nearly three-fourths have health IT experience. Most are permanent employees, though contractors took the survey as well.

Salary Expectations Versus Reality

Surprisingly a lot of health IT professionals don't think they are getting paid what they deserve. The average gap between what they earn and what they think they deserve is pretty significant at around an $18,000 difference. This is probably a driving force of why over 50% of respondents said they will change jobs within the next year.

Income by Location

Where you live will impact how much you earn, in some cases, pretty significantly.
In looking at the country by region, it appears that New England health IT jobs pay the most, with jobs in the Mid-Atlantic and Mountain regions close behind. The other areas of the country fell more line with the overall average, with the exception of the Midwest, where the average health IT salary is $80,311.

Who earns the highest health IT salaries?

Income by Job Function

Not surprisingly, those with “executive” in their job titles reported earning the highest health IT salaries ($182,036). However, the sample size was small so keep that in mind. Below, we’ve ranked the top 5 job categories that had a minimum of 25 respondents.

For the second year in a row, Project Managers reported the highest average health IT salaries. This group also reported the highest average bonus of $12,702. Health IT Management salaries were the next highest at $105,235 with an average bonus of $9,923.

Respondents were also asked to report how much money they felt they deserved to be making, and interestingly enough, the highest earners, Project Managers, had the highest discrepancy between their average income ($107,674) and the average income they felt they deserved ($136,218).

The full 2015 HealthITJobs.com Salary Survey Report is only available to our members and includes additional data not shown here including breakouts by experience levels, certifications, which organization types pay the most, and more. It also includes an Expanded Infographic with additional data. Join HealthITJobs.com today for FREE and download the full report and corresponding Infographic.